The present invention relates to a wood-type golf club whose club head is formed from a fiber-reinforced resin as a main material, and more particularly to a long wood-type golf club.
Recently, in order to increase the flying distance of a hit ball, wood-type golf clubs whose club heads are formed from a fiber-reinforced resin as a main material have been made longer and longer. Among such lengthened golf clubs, a golf club which measures 44 inches or more from the bottom of the sole of the club head to the end of the club shaft, is called a long wood-type golf club. However, if a golf club is lengthened as described above, the distance between the player and a ball when the player addresses the ball becomes long, and this makes it difficult for the player to have the club head meet exactly the ball. With a long wood-type golf club of this sort, making the club head larger is considered a preferable means for increasing the possibility of an exact meeting.
However, since making the club head larger increases the weight of the club head, a bending load applied to the neck portion where the club shaft is connected to the club head increases, leading to the drawback that the golf club becomes easy to break. Namely, as shown in FIG. 6, in a conventional wood-type golf club, a long neck portion 13 is formed on the club head 11, and an insertion hole 15 is formed in this neck portion 13 so that the club shaft 12 can be inserted thereinto. Since the conventional wood-type golf club is provided with the long neck portion 13 like this, the larger, and hence heavier the club head 11 becomes, the greater becomes the bending load applied to the neck portion 13 at the time of swinging, increasing the possibility that the long neck portion 13 can be easily broken. Due to this, it should be noted that the club head can be made larger only when the breakage of the long neck portion 13 is prevented. Thus, there is a certain limit to an effort in making the club head larger.